Cam Cole: Canucks finally get payback

Boston Bruins' Brad Marchand is no stranger to playing the villain

Forgotten in the mists of time, but resurrected by the hockey blog Puck Daddy, a segment of video from Game 4 of the 2011 Stanley Cup final reminds us that Saturday’s horrible concussion-causing submarine job on Vancouver defenceman Sami Salo was not the first such crime perpetrated by Boston Bruins rat Brad Marchand.

It wasn’t even his first against the Canucks.

He low-bridged Art Ross Trophy winner Daniel Sedin in that game in June, sending him arse-over-helmet into the boards, on the same play that he clotheslined Christian Ehrhoff, getting minor penalties for both fouls.

The difference is that the Canucks failed to score in Game 4 — on the power play, or otherwise — and lost 4-0 despite the fact that Marchand, who had Boston’s third goal, took four minor penalties. Saturday, Vancouver tallied twice during Marchand’s five-minute major, and won what many are calling the NHL’s game of the year to date.

The other difference is that in June, Marchand didn’t accuse Sedin, who was approaching at low speed, of running him. Nor did he plead self-defence, as he did Saturday — seconded by Boston coach Claude Julien — an embarrassing whopper, given Salo’s history of honest, mild-mannered play.

Julien is a terrific coach and can be an entertaining quote, but sometimes, a guy needs to take a step back and ask himself: “Who am I really serving by defending a gutless act by one of my players?”

At least Julien didn’t say: “He’s not that kind of player.” Because, of course, that’s pretty much exactly the kind of player Marchand is.

– It’s a curious thing, but a current listing of NHL villains will turn up several members of Canada’s world junior squads over the past 15 years or so, which may reveal an unflattering pattern to the way Hockey Canada carefully constructs its rosters. Though some confined their borderline sociopathic behaviour primarily to their junior days, these Canada alumni/incendiary devices include Matt Cooke (1998), Raffi Torres (2001), Jordin Tootoo (2003), Steve Downie (2006-07), Brad Marchand (2007-08) — how’s that for a start to the all-cheapshot team? — and, more recently, Patrice Cormier (2009-10) and Zack Kassian (2011).

Cooke, mind you, has renounced his evil ways and joined the choirboys, and Cormier and Kassian haven’t really got their pro careers properly warmed up yet.

– While admirably truthful, a quality rare among NHL players in these days of vanilla clichés, Los Angeles Kings forward Dustin Penner’s admission that he injured his back while eating pancakes is one he may regret.

Unless he has a heck of a sense of humour, a guy whose career has been dogged by fat/out-of-shape jokes was just inviting a raft of one-liners at his expense by explaining that he threw his back out while reaching for a stack of his wife’s “delicious pancakes.” Although his bride Jessica will be pleased at the thumbs-up on her cooking.

There have been equally bizarre injuries, like Sammy Sosa throwing his back out sneezing, or — if memory serves — former NFL quarterback Dan Pastorini tearing the nail out of his big toe on a bed sheet (probably not while sleeping), or former Blue Jays outfielder Glenallen Hill falling through a glass table after flailing around during a nightmare about spiders. (Or send your embarrassing sports-injury entries to the email address below. Salo bitten by the only poisonous snake in all of Scandinavia? Got it. Brent Sopel missing the first game of 2007 playoffs after injuring his back bending over to pick up a cracker? Check.)

Sportsnet’s Mark Spector, who once had an honest job as a Postmedia newspaper columnist, points out that Penner gutted it out after injuring himself: he finished the stack.

– At the other end of the pain-threshold scale, what miracle substance do you suppose the Pittsburgh Steelers medics injected into the ankle of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger at halftime Sunday to turn a borderline statue with a high ankle sprain into Fred Astaire, dancing around the pocket as the Steelers came from 20-6 down to force overtime in Denver?

And why did he have to have a different-coloured shoe on his injured left foot? Nike makes size-14 shoes in yellow, but not size-15s?

– “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” That’s John 3:16, the most oft-quoted Bible passage by, or on behalf of, religious athletes.

So it was kind of the perfect coda to the Tim Tebow-Denver Broncos stunning playoff victory over the Steelers that CBS’s final quarter-hour overnight rating, during which Tebow threw the winning 80-yard pass-and-run touchdown to Demaryius Thomas on the first play of overtime, was 31.6. That also happened to be the average length of Tebow’s completed passes. He hit only 10 passes all day, but for 316 yards.

It almost doesn’t matter that Tebow had all kinds of receivers open and threw wounded-duck passes wide — often ’way wide — of the target. His wins have nearly all defied statistical analysis. He just does it.

Sunday, he did it against a defence crafted by one of the game’s most enduring defensive wizards, 74-year-old Dick LeBeau, who seems to have had a senior moment at a very bad time. It was OK, as an opening gambit, for the Steelers’ defence to start out challenging Tebow to beat them with his arm, but after he kept doing it, an adjustment might have been in order. Say, in overtime. Instead, the Steelers lined up nine men in the box and left the secondary exposed. One play, and the game was over.